“Never mind me, Merriwell.” Clancy and Ballard heard the colonel say, “I’m doing well enough for the present. Just look after Darrel, will you?”
“Is he hurt, Chip?” asked Ballard.
“He wasn’t in any shape to make a fight like that,” Merry answered, “and it took the ginger all out of him. He’s fainted, that’s all.”
“One of you go down to the bottom of the gulch and get a little water,” directed the colonel.
“Curly will be all right, sir,” said Frank, “until we get that bowlder off you. Strikes me that you’re in a pretty bad situation.”
“It only seems to be a bad situation. As it happens, there’s a crevice in the bowlder where it rests upon my foot and leg. I’m pinioned here, but I don’t believe I have been injured at all.”
With a steel drill for a lever, Frank pried carefully at the big stone while Clancy and Ballard put their combined weight against it. Their efforts were successful and the bowlder was rolled away.
The colonel pulled himself together and sat up on the ledge.
“That was a close call for me,” he remarked coolly, “and for Ellis, too. Do you think you could carry him down to the water?”
“Easily,” Frank answered.